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Late last night, I finished off collecting everything in Super Metroid on Super Nintendo. Between my memory of family playing and my own exploring and searching, I found most things. I was just missing one Reserve Tank, a couple Super Missile Tanks, and around six or so regular Missile Tanks. I used a map online to pick off the few entire rooms I had missed, which got me down to just a couple Missile Tanks left. Looking up commonly missed Missile Tanks, I pretty quickly concluded I missed the one in the turtle room, but I had to search all over for the remaining one. It ended up being the one leading up to Kraid. My husband wanted to play, so I let him take the controller and confirm a bunch of them, while I marked them off on a map I printed, so that spared me some of the tedious trial and error of checking, haha. It's not the game's fault, but I gotta say, the worst part of the experience of playing this game was looking these things up online. Not because I feel bad about "cheating" or whatever some may want to call it (I always play games of this style in this way, where I do it on my own until the end and then use outside help to get whatever I missed to get a 100% file), but because the Super Metroid fan community has to be one of the most condescending, elitist fandoms for a retro game I've ever seen. I can understand getting a chuckle out of "y can't metroid crawl?" but a lot of these diehard players talk as if first-time players are idiots if they don't play the game just as well as the speedrunners. Just finding basic info on the game is a challenge because practically everything these days is devoted to speedrunning, sequence breaking, advanced techniques, etc. So I had to wade through a lot of sickening behavior just to find the info I wanted. Anyway, I'm all set to beat the game now, so I should be able to pull it off before the ball drops tonight.

I finished off Super Metroid for Super Nintendo just before 2020 started, as I posted in the Beaten in 2019 topic, but rather than start up the next game I'd like to play to completion, I tried out a few of the games I've received recently. My Vita CE of Metal Slug 3 finally showed up right before Christmas, after ordering it way back in August. I played that until I lost a continue, which didn't take very long, since I've never been especially good at any Metal Slug, though I do enjoy them a lot. Then I pulled out my WonderSwan Crystal to try Gunpey. I have the PSP version, but I've always wanted to have the original. I like the cutesy Wild West theme, as opposed to the PSP game which doesn't really have any kind of cohesive style from what I remember. This reminds me, though, that I still need to buy some color games. The first WonderSwan I got is black and white, but I've had this Crystal model for a while yet still nothing in color to try on it. After that, I fished out my Game Gear and played some Baku Baku and Fred Couples Golf, but it was a gimped experience to say the least. Time has not been kind to my Game Gear since I last played it in 2015. I'm getting no sound, and I can't see anything unless I turn the brightness all the way in one direction and then look at the screen from, like, a 45 degree angle. Even then, there are vertical bands of light where graphics show up. So I guess the capacitors have gone bad. My husband likes to fix stuff like that, so I'll leave it to him to try to repair. It's funny, back in the 00s, when I first acquired many of my retro systems, I felt like everything would hold up well for me as long as I took good care of them, but over the last decade, little issues have popped up left and right, even when I've done nothing with a system but had it stored away. There's no system from the 90s that isn't at least 20 years old now, so things are bound to be different from when I first joined this forum in 2004.

I don't have it on Xbox, so I don't know. I do have the original arcade MVS cart, and the Vita version appears to be a pretty straight port of that, albeit with a bunch more menu options before you get started and trophies and such.

I started up my Virtual Boy for the first time in probably about a decade. I was worried that it could've developed problems like my Game Gear (which my husband confirmed has leaking capacitors, but he hasn't replaced them yet), but I was relieved to see it's, for the time being at least, still working just fine. I started with Mario's Tennis just to confirm the system's functionality. It's a little lacking in depth, but it's always fun to sink some time into. I also popped Wario Land in, just to revisit a favorite for a minute. My 100% completed file appears to have disappeared. It's no big deal, since I was long done with it and don't care about preserving most of my game saves, but hopefully it's just a little hiccup and not a reflection of the battery being dead. Then I played some Vertical Force, which I received for Christmas. It's a pretty cool little vertical space shooter. It's got two fields of depth you can switch between, and it gets chaotic will all the enemies, bullets, and terrain obstacles of both.

I also played some various games via emulation while hanging out with my husband. I can't recall everything, but I played the NES version of Cabal for the first time in many years. I know I beat the game sometime past the year 2000, but it must've been before I started thoroughly keeping track of what I was beating back in 2005, since it's not anywhere on what I have saved. For not playing the game since whenever it was that I beat it, I got decently far in the game. I've always liked these shooting gallery games where you use a controller rather than a lightgun and move a character around the bottom. It's too bad there are so few of them.

Haven't had a chance to play much. I found another 2600 joystick in my wire box in the basement, so I set up a TV to test. It worked great except when I pushed right, the character wouldn't move. The humanoid in Berserk just stood and did a moonwalk. I swapped boards with another stick I was having issues with but had the same problem I determined it was the cable that was bad, so I put the board from the "moonwalker" in my other stick and I came away with a working, solid controller.

Then I played some Berserk. I forgot ypu could only shoot one blast at a time until it hit something.

Ive been playing Animal Crossing. i just looked at a FAQ. and good God is this game deep. on the surface it doesnt seem like there is much to it but it almost becomes a science trying to obtain Perfect Town status, collecting all the items, keeping your neighbors happy. ive been playing it for like ten minutes a day. I caught a stringfish and apparently its the rarest fish in the game. got lucky on that one because I wasnt even looking for it. just saw a massive silhouette in the water and knew something rare was in there

its cool playing a game that changes along with real life. some of the dialogue feels punishingly slow but besides that its a landmark achievement of a game that really takes on a life of its own.

I haven't played much since early January. I started up Illusion of Gaia on Super Nintendo, but then I started feeling sick and haven't yet returned to it. I then started up Mystic Chronicles, a digital-only PSP game, but since I only use my PSP for UMDs, I'm playing it on my Vita. I have over four hours invested into it so far, and I'm surprised that it took about that long to get my second party member, especially when these Kemco RPGs tend to be fairly short and move briskly. Granted, this game gives you loads of optional quests, and I've been completing all of them so far. Also, every party member can be paired up with a guardian beast, so I went from just the protagonist, to the protagonist with a guardian beast, to having a second character who comes with another guardian beast, so that's probably why they didn't rush to throw another character at me. I know these Kemco RPGs are often dumped on, but I've enjoyed it so far, just as I liked End of Serenity as well (the other Kemco RPG released on PSP). The graphics are nice enough, as is the music, and it's simple and straightforward, but offers some more depth if you feel like digging into it (what with how you collect materials to create or improve weapons and armor).

Still not playing much, but I've got over nine hours on the clock in Mystic Chronicles for PSP via my Vita. I recruited my third party member, Tina, a while ago, which I have to admit was a little extra incentive to start this game. As shallow as it is to care, it's not often I get to play a game that has a player-controlled character who shares my nickname (in canon, that is. Obviously there are tons of games where you can name the characters anything you please.) I can't think of any game where a controllable character shares my full first name, so my nickname is as close as I'll get. Anyway, now I'm on a new section of map. I was wondering how that was going to work because the first map screen wasn't scrolling or anything, but I didn't think the whole game would take place in that small area. I could be totally off the mark, but I think I'm probably approaching the halfway point. It doesn't look like there's any more than six party members max, and I'm starting to get quests ranked three out of five stars in difficulty. These Kemco RPGs often aren't especially long, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's beatable in under twenty hours.

I have around 12 hours in Mystic Chronicles for PSP via my Vita now. I recruited Ray, so now I have more characters than can be in the battle party. I know a lot of people like when all characters gain experience from battles, whether they participated in the battles or not, but I hate that myself. I've never been one to just find a grouping I like and stick with it. I like cycling through everybody, and trying to keep all the levels even is one way to ensure everybody gets a roughly equal amount of battle time. But here, everybody will stay around the same level even if I were to stick to the same party. Actually, I think characters don't get experience if they get knocked out in battle, so those outside of the active battle party seem to have an advantage in terms of always getting EXP. Anyway, Lux is starting to build himself a real harem, haha, but I believe at least one of the remaining recruitable characters is male. I mentioned how this game has a playable character who shares my nickname, but it's also a funny coincidence that, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak, I happen to be playing a game that has a party member named Corona. I just cleared the Road to Valencia, and I'm guessing there's not much left to do on this map screen. I also have access to the Omega Colosseum, which I assume is an optional thing, and I'll have to figure out how exactly that works.

I've finally been playing The Legend of heroes Trails of Cold Steel, around 30 hours in, and one thing I want to say, is Atlus should really take notes. So if you look at images of the game, you'll see a calendar system, but don't let that put you off from the game, because unlike Persona 5, the pacing isn't absolute garbage and the calendar system is more superficial than anything.

While you spend time with other characters, you only spend time with characters once a month and every single event per month is completely unique, so something that happens in one month won't happen throughout the rest of the game. Sometimes it gives you a bit of insight on the feelings of the characters, other times you learn about the characters past that isn't in the storyline.

The dialogue in this game is some of the best we've had in a JRPG in a long time, and not just the main story or the event scenes, but each and every event change, whether it's a different date or after an event happens during the day in the storyline, the dialogue for every single character and NPC in the game will be different. It'd be one thing if it wasn't written well or wasn't interesting, but the dialogue for the NPCs is actually really good.

The game world is good and while you have your main location, which is Thor's Military Academy, as you progress you go to multiple different cities, areas, and dungeons.

The combat is the one thing that I like, but at the same time, it's a bit underwhelming. Now it's still good, but imo it can be abused and it's not really as good as it could be. That being said, this is one of the few games where combat is the least represented part of the games gameplay where many RPGs are more combat or exploration focused. So the combat is a turn based RPG with a strategic element to it. Enemies and characters have movement and attack ranges and then delays are added to all of your attacks, skills, and spells. Using spells though have additional delay which is actually really good to disrupt turn order and push turn bonuses to different characters or enemies by inserting an extra turn into the battle. The problem with this though is that using a skill to buff party attack and then use attack skills is 99% more effective than using magic and it's so easy to maximize CP on your party. So while the combat is good, sure, to me if feels too abusable at times and is really only standout on harder boss battles.

Now one thing I'd recommend is if you do play the game, the game offers a hard difficulty. I feel that this difficulty is the best way to experience the game. I haven't played any other difficulty, but with how this one feels, I think that the normal difficulty would be too stupidly easy to be any good, but again, this is just an assumption as I've never played the game on normal.

I have roughly 20 hours in Mystic Chronicles for PSP via my Vita now, which is kind of surprising considering I think I already had End of Serenity beaten in about 15. But there wasn't much to do in that game but keep progressing the story. Mystic Chronicles has a fair amount of optional, sometimes grindy content. I recruited Alberto and made it to Aldo, so now there's just one character slot left to fill. I got a whole bunch of new weapon/armor-forging books, so now I can make a ton of new gear, and I got a whole new batch of quests. The difficulty ratings in this kind of faked me out. They used to always show five stars, and between one and and all five would be filled in. So I assumed they couldn't get any harder than a five-star rating. But some of my new quests exceed five stars, going up to like seven or eight.

Up to around 25 hours in Mystic Chronicles for PSP via my Vita and still no ending in sight, not even the last recruitable character. This has a lot of content for a Kemco RPG. On top of the quests in the Miktoran region, the other two regions got new quests too, generally involving new boss monsters showing up. So most of my time has been spent hunting down those and then using the reward money to upgrade my equipment as much as possible, though I'm starting to get to a point where I'm more limited by not having certain rare materials than by not having the funds. Some of these new monsters hit really hard. There's a bird that appeared along the Road to Valencia that creams me with multiple uses of powerful magic each turn. My characters are around level 50, so I wonder how high they'll get by the end of the game (and beyond; I know there's post-game content too). I've cleared about all the quests I can manage at the moment, so I'm ready to progress the story more. I went into the Ruins of Sin, but there wasn't much I could do on the first visit. I have to return to Aldo and see where it goes from there.

I quickly got what I needed to advance farther into the Ruins of Sin in Mystic Chronicles for PSP via my Vita, and then I traveled through Irkalla and got my final party member. It makes sense that the character who has been tagging along for most of the game but not an active member of the party would finally join proper. It's weird to have a character join without a guardian beast, though. I must be nearly at the end now. Story-wise, it seems like they're setting up the final battle, but I've also found almost every (or maybe literally every, didn't check the last time before turning it off) Training Book, so there's basically no equipment that's still inaccessible to me, outside of just not having the materials. I don't know if any new quests will open up at any point, but I've got most of those cleared too, so I don't have much I can do to make money in a timely manner. The game does have optional micro-transactions, so I'm sure some things are intentionally grindy, to encourage you to spend real money in order to get in-game money and materials faster. I definitely don't plan to spend any more on this game than what I paid to buy it (though that wasn't much; it was on sale at the time for somewhere around 5 bucks), so I'll see just how much grinding for materials and money I'll want to do. I'll definitely check out the post-game content when the time comes, but if I get to a point where there's nothing left to do but grind in order to fill out my weapon and armor lists, I might just say screw it.